Abstract [en]

Recently the society has been turning from the use of paper-based technologies to plastic cards in certain spheres of our life. With the emergence and proliferation of high technologies we cannot content with the security provided bypaper only. Therefore the society has chosen plastic to protect its information because it offers far more security based not only on human perception but also on machine-readable elements.

The number of plastic cards in circulation in different spheres of our everyday life increases constantly. They replace money, documents and allow easy and safe access to some services. In spite of its security the plastic card however is subjected to fraud.

Plastic card fraud results in significant losses for the various industries. Since the first appearance of plastic cards methods of committing fraud have changed dramatically. Now there is a wide range of high technologies at the disposal of criminals as well as card manufacturers.

Therefore we have put the great emphasize of this work on the analysis of the most common card technologies in the Plastic Card World, the magnetic stripe and the chip, existing crimes and main means of their committing. And we also have revealed the weak and strong sides of the prevention techniques, which are currently in use.